Month: September 2011

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You Have the Power And You Are Not A Victim

Fire KnivesDo you every feel like a victim?

When someone is doing something to turn us into an emotional victim, sometimes it can look like a performance, don’t you think?  Someone is yelling, arms swinging about, face animated – and there you are, breathless and emotional.

However, being victimized and being a victim are different things.  Being a participant of an interpersonal exchange is different from being an audience to it.

Imagine a stage and you and have been selected from the audience.  You climb up and join the performer, let’s call him Ron.  Ron is a professional fire and knife dancer.  You are standing near Ron and flaming knives seem like they are everywhere.  He is quite a dramatic dancer and part of you wants to dance with him.  You know you would get hurt badly and yet you have the hardest time resisting the urge to participate.  Your wisdom prevails and you remain uninjured.  You applaud and walk away.

Later at home, you are still marveling that anyone could move that way and work that hard to evoke such strong emotion from their audience.  The emotions replay the dance in your mind almost as if you were still there with Ron.

Do you feel like a victim to Ron?  You don’t have to.

When you don’t like what someone is doing or saying to you, imagine that it is a performance of sorts and don’t take it personally.  You don’t have to be a victim.  You have the power.  Be a friend to yourself.

Now, if you can’t do this no matter what, if you feel powerless and unresponsive to your redirections, it may be medical.  You might be suffering from any number of illnesses that cause personalization, guilt, fear, reliving experiences and so forth.  You shouldn’t suffer like that.  You were created to feel pleasure.

Self-Care Tip – Applaud and walk away when someone is victimizing you.

Questions:  How do you manage to use your power when you are being victimized?  How are you accountable for your feelings and behaviors when people are hurtful?  Please tell us your story.

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Seeing Your Brain As The Place Emotions and Behaviors Come from is Terrifying

Terror

Image by pablokdc via Flickr

Where do emotions and behaviors come from?

Now think about it and answer your true beliefs.

I was speaking with a wonderful physician the other day to whom I asked this question, (let’s call her Doctora.)

I respect Doctora for her character, personality, standard of medical practice and interpersonal beauty. She is a bulldog in the operating room. When patients need studies done that insurances won’t pay for, she tears barriers to treatment apart with vicious tools of rightness. And she cares.  She sits.  She asks.  And she cares.  She sees the person in the paper gown, each one for the person she knows them to be and the person yet unknown.

I admire Doctora greatly not only for these qualities but also because it gets personal.  I, who have my own special practice of medicine, cannot do her’s.

When just a green bumbler in medical school, there was a fateful day when I shadowed another great artist of medical care into a locker room.  I suited up in that blue sack they call scrubs.  I put little blue sacks over my tennis shoes too.

Do you know why there are blue sacks on the surgeon’s shoes?  So that when wet things come out of the human body and fall onto their feet, their toes won’t feel squishy. Yep. That’s what was going through my mind as I scrubbed my hands, each finger and each finger nail the ten minutes it takes to reach what is considered clean.

Surgery in progress, the color red mixed with a smell and monstrous sensual force that clobbered me to the ground.  I swooned, gagged and promptly ended my surgical career.

There is nothing more irritating to a surgeon than someone who doesn’t appreciate the “fun” of “cutting.” Yes. I irritated this mentor and others too I’m afraid.

This doesn’t keep me unfortunately from pleasuring in telling people, “I am licensed to do surgery.”  I am you know.  Any Jane with a medical license can pick a scalpel up and bring back the dark ages, or contemporary, depending on who holds the license.  I’m irritating to my mentors, remember.  It reminds me how anyone can go online and pay to become a marriage registrar, i.e. perform a marriage ceremony for couples.  My brother did that twenty years ago and has yet to perform the marriage ceremony for a willing couple.  For real judges and clergy, this might be irritating too and that makes me a little happy as well.

Anywho, Doctora and I were rolling with the injustices haranguing us in the practice of medicine, both from the angle of the physician and the patient. I was pumping her up for being the cutting-wonder who she was and she was dutifully marveling at my jabber-mouth work that she would, “never be able to do in a million years.”  Somehow this brought us round to how our culture avoids embracing the biological paradigm of anything inside our skull but is so willing to celebrate it for any other part of our human bodies.

Where do emotions and behaviors come from?

Doctora answered me with a frozen breath. Then after I soiled the air with a lot of jabbering and she was finally able to speak, she said,

I would just be horrified if my brain got sick!

I wondered if it was scary enough to clobber her to the ground, but I do agree.  Terrifying.  Don’t you think?

Question:  Is that why hardly anyone can speak about the brain being human and largely responsible for where our emotions and behaviors come from? How has this played into your experience of self-care?  Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip – Go to the fear that keeps you from embracing your biology to gain more freedom.

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Name Your Fear To Know You Are Free

She knew the Horned King‘s secret name.

His name?  … I never realized a name could be so powerful?

Yes….  Once you have courage to look upon evil, seeing it for what it is and naming it by its true name, it is powerless against you, and you can destroy it.

– The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Science Fair Wins Ribbons

Image by OakleyOriginals via Flickr

Mistakes and the mist of shame thicken about us and it is hard to hope.  As if each effort of our intended labor produced Seconds and Flops we must stand in our Besties beside what we have done to get a participant appreciation ribbon tagged onto our lapel.

And somehow standing there, the layer of sweat thick under too many clothes, we remember the secret name, it comes and we whisper.  We whisper it; our last courage still enough for that.  There is a moment of surprise, as if we and whatever pressed us down didn’t know we might still live.

We can see now that we are not alone; just there, in fact you are there with your own passed over table.  I remember you working nights on it, your tired eyes, a happiness in your muscles still.  In those days.

We can see that we are special for more than injury; we hear now.  We feel concern for more and taste newness that filled the space.  The secret name.

We won’t tell you or it wouldn’t be secret any more.  But now that we remember we are free.  Now that we have the knowing, we will keep the power, thank you.

There is power in a name.

We won’t forget what came after evil and will speak more readily into dark spaces, will wait less and fear less because we have already been there.  Going toward the pain like that.  What’s the worst that can happen when you name your fear?  It takes no more than a whisper to be strong.

Self-care Tip – Speak into your dark spaces the name of your fear.  Be a friend to yourself

Question – What reminds you that you are free despite the fears that tell you otherwise?  How is freedom your truth in life even when your senses tell you otherwise?  Please tell us your story.

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I Am Beloved

I’ve been liebstered by the multitalented comic artist, blogger, critique and gamer and all around great quacking Duck.

The Duck of Indeed The Duck of Indeed has been a friend of ours this past year on FriendtoYourself.com and gives this honor, beloved, just when it seems love is just what I was thinking life was about.  How indeed can I or you connect with our own personal journey without love.  How do we find the strength to fight when we lack that for inspiration.  Fighting for self-care is improved upon with the development of our clarity that we are lovable and beloved.  Thank you Duck.  We will press on together.

The rules of the Liebster Blog award are that if you receive the award, not only do you have less than 200 followers, but is designed because someone believes that you should have more.  Isn’t Duck a sweetie?  That, and, you should link back to the blogger that nominated you (yours truly) and nominate five more blogs.  Let the nominees know of course that you nominated them.

(My friends, I have no idea how many blog subscribers you have! but, however many, you should have more!)

  1. The only Cin by Cindy Taylor  
  2. Clarbojahn’s Blog by Clar Bowman-Jahn
  3. The Water Witch’s Daughter On The Journey With SuziCate 
  4.  bridgesburning by Chris King

  5. Learning to be still  by Char48

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Fighting For Brain Health Is At The Core Of Being A Friend To Yourself

Nose-picking in progress.

Image via Wikipedia

Demanding what we cannot give is a cruel relationship with ourselves.  It is cruel that we must have insight to pursue health treatment for the brain whose variety of illness destroys our capacity to see into ourselves.

It’s one thing for us to choose not to do what we see is to be done.  We all choose not to take care of ourselves by degrees.  We all make choices against information and sight;

Smoking, exercise, sugar intake, sleep hygiene, working more hours, avoiding interpersonal connections, soda, driving fast, jay-walking, hand-washing, self-medication, self-injury, brushing hair from the top down, splashing our soup, flossing, nose-picking and eating with our mouth open.

Insight is there and we choose not to.

Even so, it is arrogant to presume insight into our own human condition and the more I know, the more I agree with the humility of any great teacher – there is so much out there that we don’t see into.  However this is critically different from the inability to see into and that is the cruel irony of requiring a decision that our brain is unable to be informed about.

There are a number of these.  I’m wondering if you can tell us about your own story of what healing has done for your ability to “see?”  It’s a service to many to know that fighting for brain health is at the core of being a friend to yourself.

Self-Care Tip – Fight for brain health – it is at the core of being a friend to yourself.

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Victim to Emotions Versus The Friendliness In Accountability

Thin layer chromatography is used to separate ...

Image via Wikipedia

It’s just hard!

It is hard.  Do you feel like a victim?

Yes I do?  It’s hard when they are making you feel this way and no one gets it unless they are here fighting against both sides like I have to.

Juanita’s self-perception and emotions; suffering is special and specific to Me, I am chosen to suffer, I am alone in my suffering and I am helpless, were carried by the air particles through our room.

In 1910, Russian botanist Mikhail Tsvet used water to do this to plant dyes.   The water in the plant dyes carried the pigment, separating them for his needs.  This is now called chromatography and we use it to determine what makes up a particular flavor or scent, to analyze pollutants, to find traces of drugs in urine, and to separate blood proteins.  You might remember doing this yourself as a child in the simple science experiment with a marker, a couple drops of water and a coffee filter.

Juanita’s son also knew about chromatography, I could tell.  He may not have called it that with words, but he did call it out with his body, his eyes and the muscles around his lips told me as I watched that the emotions had made their way over to him and that he was bringing them inside.

Some people call emotions contagious and others may describe them as spreading.  No one thinks they don’t travel.  No one thinks they remain stationary.  In fact, if we were to reduce everything in the known world, living and nonliving matter, and expand our thoughts into a large large amount of time, we’d agree that nothing is stationary.  Furthermore, everything is changed by the influencers in its universe.

Juanita’s son knew this even if he didn’t cognitively piece it together.  He was taking in his mom’s emotions and they were making their changes on him.

What I asked Juanita was if it mattered in the end.  She’s still left with herself, regardless of where things came from.  We’d like to think others should take care of us, at least not do damage to us, but if they don’t or if they do, in the end, we are left with ourselves.  All these perceived degrees of abuse she suffered – what now?

Saying we are left with ourselves, accountable to ourselves and should take care of ourselves is not making any statement about the condition of our connections with the world around us.  It’s just talking about Me.  Sometimes we perceive how others take care of us, sometimes we don’t.  The same goes with feeling alone and so forth.  But that isn’t about accountability to ourselves.

I would have liked to have said the same thing to Juanita’s son but couldn’t.  I hope he learns it from watching his mother.  If he or mom gain insight into this and can act on that insight, wonderful.  If they cannot do one or the other though, I’d bet there’s something biological going on and need to take care of themselves by looking for medical help.

Question:  How do you perceive accountability to yourself being different from where the problems drift towards you from?  Or from how you have been changed by problems?  Please tell me your story.

Related FriendtoYourself.com Articles:

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Love Comes Out of Bad Because in Any Circumstance, Good or Bad, Love Comes

Victor Hugo-Bridge

Image via Wikipedia

Ten years ago, what were you doing in life.  Did you think you would be “here?”  Were you thinking past September 11?

My daughter asked me the other day what I meant when I said that good can come out of bad.  You know me.  I cocked my guns and started happily blazing.  Good coming out of bad has nothing to do with the badness of events.  It has everything to do with the goodness.  It has everything to do with what is stronger.  The love.  Love is stronger than anything.

Victor Hugo described La Esmerelda‘s beauty with this kind of quality around her peers.

As, however, they all possessed nearly the same degree of beauty, 

they fought with equal weapons, and each might cherish a hope of 

victory. The coming of the Bohemian suddenly destroyed this

equilibrium. Her beauty was so surpassing, that at the moment 

when she appeared at the entrance of the room, she seemed to shed 

over it a sort of light peculiar to herself. In this close 

apartment, over-shadowed by hangings and carvings, she appeared 

incomparably more beautiful and radiant than in the public place 

like a torch which is carried out of the broad day-light into 

the dark. In spite of themselves, the young ladies were dazzled. 

Each felt wounded, as it were, in her beauty.

Love, or call it goodness, has a victory to offer us.  In the presence of bad or not bad, Love is.  And because it is, the turning of bad into good happens.  In consequence to its goodness and nothing else.

...like a torch which is carried out of the broad 
day-light into the dark.

September 11, ten years ago, the streets of Boston were filled with parked cars.  The taxis were not going anywhere.  Their drivers were dazed, their radios blasting the news of smoke and buried bodies.  I was weeping with them and sat on the curb, cold with the early night, listening to their radios.  I don’t know why I didn’t go home to watch the news.  I wanted to be with these people I think.  The people.  We needed each other.  What could love bring out of this ten years later?  What would light do in this darkness?

I don’t know what your story is but I believe that Love is.  And because of what it is, in our darkness, good can come.  It has everything to do with what Love is and is all the more lovely because of the bad company.

Here is one mother’s story.  Please tell us yours.  Keep on.

Self-Care Tip – When bad is there, remember that Love is.

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What Makes A Doctor-Patient Relationship

Power

Image by JAS_photo via Flickr

In our last post, The Struggle in A Doctor-Patient Relationship To Not Get Personal, your comments were critical to bringing it all together.  So much so, that I think it’s worth our time to review the main points about the doctor-patient relationship.

1.  People wonder about how to relate or conduct themselves.  It’s not clear and there are no directions.  In fact, for something so objective, why isn’t it?

  • a subject I have often wondered about – Cindy Taylor
  • when I see the new Doc, I just tell my story and describe symptoms????  – Sekan Blogger
  • hope that those professionals would be much more upfront with their patients – Nancy

2.  The professional distance itself between doctor and patient lends to the healing process

  • The doctor patient relationship is one thing that makes healing possible – Pattyann
  • if friends could help me I wouldn’t need to see a professional… – Patricia
  • distance …is such a strength – Kate Shrewsday
  • something far more greater than what a friend could provide and if I knew the intimate details of her life, that would have changed – S Sanquist

3.  The exchange of money for service is generally part of its constitution and brings motives into question.  Is there a price for the value of a patient’s health or even life?

  • You better keep me alive or there will be less money for you to make – Carl D’Agostino

4.  Power Imbalance

  • health professionals and I are not on the same social level when I am the patient and they are my health provider – Val
  • It (is) a loss to move from friend to patient. That is just how it has to go in the self-care process. Then there is the anxiety of the Dr. discovering who you really are and perhaps being disappointed. – M
  • same fine line in the teaching profession – Sarah McGaugh
  • most of my relationships have some sort of power imbalance – Shout Abyss

In truth, all relationships have an imbalance of power.  In healthy personal relationships, there is a flux in power, back and forth.  It’s a problem if they don’t pulse and is possibly one of the signs of an abusive relationship.

However, this doesn’t hold true in doctor-patient combos.  They are imbalanced by design and stay that way.  It feels counterintuitive at times to those involved.  But a good physician is like a good book – he/she/it is there for Me.  It is a unidirectional relationship.  There aren’t many good unidirectional relationships otherwise, …except for all those others.  You’ve heard of police, cashier’s, housekeepers, entertainers or, for example as Sarah reminded us, teachers.  But these are professional relationships and none of these are personal either, are they?  Unless you’re human, and then they are.  Oh bother!

Self-Care Tip – Find out what pleases you and what bothers you about your doctor-patient relationships.

Question:  What does please you and what does bother you about your doctor-patient relationships?  How do you imagine it would be if it were even better for your needs?  Please tell us your story.

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The Struggle in A Doctor-Patient Relationship To Not Get Personal

Conversation between doctor and patient/consumer.

Image via Wikipedia

In a patient doctor relationship, one of the realities is that our roles limit us from personal relationships.  Do things get personal?  I suppose inevitably as long as we are both human they will.  But we do our best to stay professional and use the standard of practice and the guidelines presented by our profession’s specialty board to help counsel us.  Because of years of increasing litigant awareness on both sides, patient and physician, this has culturally become important.

Each physician must decide what defines their ethical boundaries in their practice of care.  Each patient at some point must understand that there is a difference between what they are receiving and what they are giving in this relationship.  The patient doctor relationship is different from a friendship in part because there is an unequal level of power between them that opens up a huge index of interpretations on motives, intentions and fair play.  It also robs the patient of receiving what is considered a more objective level of treatment.  When things are personal, it’s more difficult to be objective.  It’s more difficult to do our job.

When I was in medical school, the psychologist I saw became intensely special to me.  She was the one who saw my vulnerabilities in every color.  Even though I cried regularly, brought her gifts that, thank God she accepted, and felt affection toward her, she somehow reciprocated without making me think I’d ever hear about her personal life, see her cry, receive gifts from her nor affection beyond what was appropriate for our professional exchange.  I learned so much from her but wish I could learn more.

Physicians do different things to help themselves learn and practice professionally.  It isn’t easy.  After all, we have feelings.  Some of us have temperaments that are naturally what culture would consider professional; temperaments that predispose for cognitive processing, naturally not personalizing what isn’t about us and have needs outside of interpersonal relationships.  Other physicians are designed to bring people into our inner space, and when that is not considered ethical, have an ongoing degree of struggle to maintain distance.  It is an important skill for anyone who plans on practicing outside of prison to learn quickly.

In psychiatry, historically when we used to do more psychoanalysis, it was accepted practice to collect all fees at the beginning of the session.  The patient placed the money on the table where it stayed throughout the hour as a reminder that this is a professional relationship.  I have chosen to maintain a variation of that practice where I try to collect the fees in cash from patients rather than my staff.  Sometimes when I’m behind or such I’m not able to but I try.  My hope is that Freud got something right and that the patients, at some level, register that I am hired for a medical service which is perhaps more than friendship.  You can imagine how this is less obvious to some seeing their psychiatrist rather than their podiatrist.

I have other support to help also, such as through my malpractice insurance, CAP-MPT.  They are wonderful.  They are available any time for a phone or email consultation on any question I have.  (I believe they know my name by now.)  They also send out regular newsletters on related topics to their clients which I read seriously and try to implement.

Before writing FriendtoYourself.com, I was much more guarded.  I never treated friends or family and felt isolated from my community which I thought I was doing to maintain patient confidentiality issues.  I’m so glad that has eased up a bit inside of me.  I’m a better physician because of it.  I will continue to learn about this dynamic balance in patient doctor relationships from my patients and from experience and welcome the growth.

Self-Care Tip – Give yourself the benefit of keeping a professional in your life who knows their role.

Question:  What is your opinion about the patient doctor relationship?  Do you ever struggle with boundaries?  How do you see those boundaries as being in your favor of getting better medical care?  Please tell us your story.

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I am Liebster’d and It’s Grand

The last award I received was the Stylish Blogger award.  It’s only happened a couple of times but it has always been a fun surprise.

Our friend, Carl D’Agostino, awarded FriendtoYourself.com the Liebster Blog Award.  Why?  He says it’s to bring additional recognition to this site.  I now understand that FriendtoYourself.com qualifies because it has less than 200 followers.  This is the one time I am glad to have less than 200 followers because being honored by Carl is huge for me.  If you check out his comments here at FriendtoYourself.com, his cartoons and comics on his own blog, i know i made you smile, and start interacting with him through his comment section, it won’t take you long to understand why.

Carl has over the past year+ become my friend and mentor.  He never asked for it.  You know that in the presence of a generous spirit, we naturally give without expecting more in return than that person is who they are.  His intuition and sometimes edge, inspire and instruct.  I’d be a fool not to listen.  He doesn’t ask for it.  But you know how it goes.  In the presence of a generous spirit….  (Liebster means ‘beloved’ in German.  Is that right Thysleroux?  I think it’s real sweet.  Thanks Carl.)

The rules roll that if you receive the award, not only do you have the, “less than 200 followers,” but you should have more.  Those are the rules :).  That, and, you should link back to the blogger that nominated you (yours truly) and nominate five more blogs.  Let them know that you nominated them, or it may be that your tree grows in a forest of Internet Web and jungle but never seen.

Here are five blogs I am honored to share space with…. Five out of almost a google more out there that I admire – all for their own reasons.  (You know who you are.)  People doing what they love to do and working hard at it are a delight in life.  Keep on.

1.  Absurd Old Bird ~ aka Val Erde… who plays with words and images.

2.  The Duck of Indeed The Duck of Indeed  Art, writing, and one person’s journey to do it all, – with, well… Duck.

3.  KANSAS MEDIOCRITY, – with Tracy Phillips.

4.  ocdbloggergirl.com LIVING WITH OCD…WITH HUMOR, – with Lisa

5.  Living Victoriously Hope, Life, Inspiration, and Realities, – with Marie.

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Insight Isn’t Worth Much For Self-Care… Or Is It?

Autumn Red peach.

Image via Wikipedia

Much of self-care is about taking accountability for our choices.  Choices come in deliberately – “Oh my!  I’m old already!  It’s time to have a baby!”  Or not deliberately – “Oh my!   He’s hot!  Whoops!  I’m having a baby!”  Both choices brought a baby.  Both choices accountable by Me.

In interpersonal exchanges this is ever in debate.  From parenting to being parented, from spouses to friendship and all up and down the Mississippi river – the martyrs stake rarely collects dust.

That baby keeps her awake and she can never sleep with her husband any more or else no one gets any sleep.

That’s a lot of responsibility to put on those tiny infant shoulders.  Don’t you think?

Mom just runs my life!  I have things to do but every weekend she expects me to be by her side!

Mom may run your life but you are choosing for her to do it if that is true.

The scenes could continue on our imaginary screen, but our own are enough to keep us busy.  We don’t need others from others to get the point.  But insight only takes us so far.  Sometimes I get all grumpy and say, “Insight isn’t worth much.”  Because, we all know that we don’t choose many of our emotions.  We are learning here at FrientoYourself.com also that we don’t choose many of our behaviors.  Insight sits in us like a stone fruit.  Eat it up or don’t, eventually all we have left is a stone if we don’t have the biology to work with it.

Self-Care Tips in a stone fruit:  To take care of ourselves, to take accountability for our choices, to use our insight for more than a midmorning snack fruit – we must have the working body to turn insight into production.  One stone fruit can germinate and grow.

Question:  What relationship does insight have in your self-care?  What limitations does it have in your self-care?  please tell us your story.

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Please Get Back on Your Meds!

Please get back on your meds!

Pretha explained that her mom had done better on her medication.  It was the irritability that isolated her.  That and the boredom.

It’s just boring, her daughter said.  It’s boring because there’s just so little there before she falls into her fray.  The venere is so thin.  It’s just boring.  

Pretha’s mom who had taken her medication didn’t see what it was doing for her.  Every day it had hurt her a little, knowing what she knew.  She was better now that she had given it over to God.  Her life without medication was a testimony to the power of God.  She had not been faithful taking medication.

What do you think, doctor?  How am I doing?  Aren’t I doing well?

Pretha’s mom was difficult to maintain eye contact with.  I wanted to please her.  That’s not easy for a physician.  At least for me.  It was more uncomfortable because my thoughts had already skated down the path of what if’s.  Whatever I said, Pretha’s mom wasn’t going to get back on her meds.

Where’s the self-care in this?  Pretha?  Mom?  Physician?  You, reader?  Do you identify with any of us?

Pretha and I have similar jobs.  Keep what is about Me, right there.  Be present with ourselves first and subsequent to that more able to be present with Pretha’s mom.

Pretha’s mom has her job of sifting through her distortions, using her same organ that is diseased to understand her disease.  Pretha’s mom’s job is large.

What is your self-care job reader?  Please tell us your story.